South Binness Island is an island in

Langstone Harbour Langstone Harbour is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Hampshire. It is an inlet of the English Channel in Hampshire, sandwiched between Portsea Island to the south and west, Hayling Island to the south and east, and Langs ...

. It is long and up to wide but only rises to above

Ordnance Datum In the British Isles, an ordnance datum or OD is a vertical datum used by an ordnance survey as the basis for deriving altitudes on maps. A spot height may be expressed as AOD for "above ordnance datum". Usually mean sea level (MSL) is used fo ...

. Archaeological finds include Bronze Age pottery and an unfinished Plano-convex knife. In 1978 the island along with the other islands in Langstone harbour was acquired by the

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a charitable organisation registered in England and Wales and in Scotland. It was founded in 1889. It works to promote conservation and protection of birds and the wider environment throug ...

who turned it into a bird sanctuary. Since that time unauthorised landings have been forbidden. The Island is a nesting site for

black-headed gull The black-headed gull (''Chroicocephalus ridibundus'') is a small gull that breeds in much of the Palearctic including Europe and also in coastal eastern Canada. Most of the population is migratory and winters further south, but some birds res ...

s and the

little tern The little tern (''Sternula albifrons'') is a seabird of the family Laridae. It was formerly placed into the genus ''Sterna'', which now is restricted to the large white terns. The genus name is a diminutive of ''Sterna'', "tern". The specific '' ...

. In 2008 the island had 4,886 nesting pairs of black-headed gulls and 11 nesting pairs of little terns. None of the little terns managed to raise any young that year something thought to be in part due to the number of black-headed gulls. In 2013 500 tonnes of aggregate was added to a beach on the island in order to raise its height. The hope was that the higher beach would offer little terns more nesting sites high enough to avoid the risk of them being washed away by the tide.

References

{{coord, 50.823, N, 1.009, W, region:GB_type:isle, display=title Islands of Hampshire